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Purpose: Truck appointment systems (TAS) are a reliable method for seaport container terminals to reduce peaks in truck arrivals. Thereby, the operation costs for terminals and the waiting times for trucking companies are reduced. The focus of this study is to optimize TAS by analyzing and transferring the components of nonport time slot booking systems. Methodology: A comprehensive systematic literature analysis is applied to identify the potential of non-port time slot booking systems. Three industries are identified whose time slot booking systems are well transferable to TAS. The most promising industry, the health care sector, and specific approaches are selected for a benchmark. Findings: The results show that in particular the time window booking systems from the health care sector have a good transferability to TAS in ports. Of the approaches examined, the overbooking of appointments in fixed time windows was rated most positively in the benefit analysis. Originality: Past studies usually treat TAS in ports as a completely new subject area. Findings from other industries are rarely taken into account. A systemic study on the transferability of selected approaches from other sectors has not yet been carried out for TAS.

Truck appointment systems (TAS) are a well-recognized method to smooth the peaks in truck arrivals at seaport container terminals and thereby reduce operation costs for the terminals and waiting times for trucking companies. This study analyzes the influence of different drayage patterns on the success of a TAS at seaport container terminals by means of a discrete event simulation model. These drayage patterns vary in the percentages of transports between container terminals and container terminals and other logistics nodes. Past studies mainly focus on the general impact of TAS on container terminals or on trucking companies. Rarely different TAS’ characteristics are analyzed regarding their impact on the performance. To the authors’ knowledge, the influence of varying shares of different drayage origins and destinations have not been studied so far. The results show that the pattern of drayage transports has a considerable influence on the success of TAS. As the transport from terminals to logistics nodes and vice versa is bound to the opening hours of the logistics nodes, trucking companies often need to execute inter terminal transports at night.

Bulk cargo terminal congestion management, approaches have tended to be almost exclusively focused on the sea side of bulk terminals. To-date there has been very limited work on land-side approaches to mitigate congestion in bulk terminals. This research aims to address these gaps by considering the effectiveness of multiple congestion management methods across a range of throughput scenarios. This paper develops a discrete event simulation model based on data collected from an Australian bulk wood chip export maritime terminal and analyses the effect of infrastructure and process improvements on gate congestion and hinterland logistics chains. The improvements include: variations of terminal configurations, a terminal appointment system and gate automation technology. This paper argues that traditional efficiency and utilization measures fail to capture the impact of these alternatives over the whole hinterland logistics chain. Results indicate that the gate automation technology and the introduction of an appointment system can reduce average turnaround times by approximately 20%. Interestingly additional unloading capacity has a relatively small influence (<10%) on the average turnaround time under the initial truck arrival frequency. Significantly, findings highlight how the range of alternatives that improve efficiency and utilization can be impaired when organizations do not plan and negotiate impacts with other terminal users along the hinterland logistics chain. The impact of these alternatives needs to be evaluated in the broader hinterland perspective to enhance stakeholder ’buy-in’ and resilience over time of solutions implemented.